


The Hunger Never Leaves

by Shapelybutts



Category: No Fandom
Genre: American East Coast lore, Body Horror, Creature Fic, Depression, F/F, Gen, Lore - Freeform, Monster - Freeform, Mythology - Freeform, Native American Mythology - Freeform, Original work - Freeform, Suicide, Wendigo, Wendigos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 12:52:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8162632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shapelybutts/pseuds/Shapelybutts
Summary: He is hungry, so very hungry.___
Keith is a survivor, but he is not alive.After a horrific car accident in the mountains that kills his wife and only child, he becomes immortal; but it comes at a price. His hunger for human flesh surpasses all reason, and he can barely control it. Suicide is no longer an option, but he sees no point in living if he has to live on the hearts of others.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty disturbing imagery, so if you're a bit squeamish, please consider reading something else...

            The hunger he felt was deeper than just the churnings of his stomach, the ache of _not enough_. The hunger was more than just a simple starvation for sustenance, a tautness of skin against bone, against softening muscle; it ate him up and ripped his sanity into tiny pieces. He could manage the hunger, to an extent, could lessen it a bit, if he was careful enough - but the hunger reached in farther than that, reached into his mind, poisoned his brain, tore into his soul… It burned and shrieked, it laughed when he denied it and howled when he didn’t…

            And he was always hungry.

            There was never enough to eat.

 

_Rule number one: The Hunger was unavoidable_

 

            He didn’t originally have this hunger, this insatiable craving, this lust, this longing. He used to be normal. He used to have a family, a loving wife, a beautiful child…

            He used to live.

            But now? Now, now he survived. On the outside, from a foreign perspective, he had done just that, and more - as a human. He had gone to the funerals. He had spent the appropriate amount of time grieving. He’d returned to work, he paid his rent, he mowed the lawn, weeded the flowerbed, trimmed the hedges, got his car washed, greeted the neighbors, talked to his coworkers… but he wasn’t living.

            Not when there was a hole in his heart that just kept eating away at his innards, when his lungs refused to expand and contract every time he thought of what he’d lost. Not when his hunger kept him up late at night, kept him from sleeping. Not when he shattered all of the mirrors in the house and relished in the pain in his knuckles, the blood down his arms. Not when he placed all the picture frames in the house face down on their shelves or turned them backwards towards the walls. He wasn’t living. He supposed he could never really live again.

            Every other month, when he needed to curb the ache in his belly and stock up, when he had to keep himself from going berserk, he was gruesomely reminded of this. His humanity, the edge over that all-consuming hunger was set and paid for in blood. How could he live? How could he when he had to survive on the hearts of others? The souls of others stared at him from the shelves of the freezer in his basement. He could feel their eyes from below the floor, his secret, watching with hatred.

            What would you see if you walked into his house?

            First, you would notice the dust. Then the lack of personal items. The broken glass edges of where his reflections used to be in the bathrooms. A smell of must, of old memories. A mysterious lack of dirty dishes.

            He used to live.

 

_Rule number two: The Hunger must be satiated_

 

            If he paid close enough attention in his house, if he slowed his breathing until he wasn’t, if he ignored the phantom pounding of what used to be his heart, the silence of the blood in his ears, and _listened_ , he could hear a woman’s faint laughter… a boy’s giggle… and then he would still as the sounds faded away into bitterness.

            He wasn’t sure which was more pathetic; the way he searched for the ghostly, phantasmal reminders of what used to be his family, or the way that he pretended to the world like he wasn’t broken.

            And he was broken. So, so broken.

            And so sometimes, when his brokenness became too much to bear, when the hunger reared its ugly head, he ignored it.

            And the hunger grew. And grew.

            And grew,

 

_-paiN-_

 

            And grew,

 

_-EaT nOW noW NoW-_

 

            (and grew…)

 

_-HuNGrY-_

 

            (He couldn’t ignore the hunger anymore)

 

_Rule number three: When the hunger gets too much…_

_-feast-_

 

            And so he did.

            The first time, he woke up under a black starless sky in the park near his house. Dead grass had tickled his chin, brushed his uneven stubble. Skeletal jungle gyms loomed from rotten mulch in the shadows.

            He had lain there, soaking up the dew and chill of early morning. He hadn’t bothered to make it home to clean up, that first time. He’d figured that with the hour he was up at, no one would see the evidence of his hunger as he staggered into a pond and washed most of the blood off, tried to scrape the gristle from his teeth, the cooling tissue from his hair, mud from his feet.

            He’d figured that he’d finally become what he’d felt he was.

 

mONStER MonSTer mONstEr

 

            He was a monster, a bogeyman. He was what was under your bed, what you saw in the shadows, watching for his next sin.

            And he was a sinner; he feasted on those who lived, their hearts in his stomach, their souls eaten to fill his own empty one. He had eaten and eaten and eaten, but he couldn’t ever be filled to completion.

            When he realized this, he had made a decision.

 

_Rule number four: Suicide is never an option_

 

Because it wasn’t. He’d tried, and failed. And tried again, and failed so many times that the sidewalk he’d landed on had been stained, despite the rain. He climbed the stairs again, ten flights, twenty, roof level… he jumped.

And lay there on the pavement, twisted and torn open, weeping.

He could not die.

It’d started to become daylight, and the rain was stopping, and office workers would be up and on their way to work, city folk up and about to walk dogs, taking time for a jog. In a moment, there would be someone who would see him, lying there, broken, in a pool of his own blood. What would they think? Would they stop to help him? Would they call the police? An ambulance?

Or would they see him for what he really was?

A monster. Something that should be killed.

He could not die.

The hunger was showing itself again. He must’ve run through his non-existent reserves, attempting to endlessly kill himself.

He had never felt so helpless in his life.

He picked himself up. He stood there, hunched over, and so, so broken. He wanted to die.

He could not die.

 

_Rule number five: Injuries enhances the hunger_

 

At his house, he takes a package from his fridge and sits at his kitchen table and unwraps an arm from crinkled white butcher paper, tearing into it with a blank face. The pale skin is the first to go, dripping defrosting blood into a tray, and then he eats the muscle. Tendons and cartilage are ripped from the bone and into his mouth. The bone is broken into pieces with his hands, the marrow scooped out with his nails and tongue, and he crunches and grinds the pieces into dust between his teeth. He picks up the cookie sheet and pours what’s left into his mouth. A bit of coagulating blood leaks from the corner of his lips.

His stomach is stretched and full, but he hungers for more, ever more. He is never full.

He’d never realized how much he’d taken being full for granted, before. Breakfast, lunch, dinner - he’d always walked away from the table not hungry, not wishing for more.  Now? Now he has to pace himself to keep his stomach from exploding, his hunger from conquering him. If he gave into it, his guts would stretch and tear, opening up his inner cavity to undigested flesh.

He’d over-ate, once. He hadn’t died then either, though the pain from his insides festering and bleeding had made him wish he had. He’d had to cut himself open and cleanse the rot from his body, sop the blood out with a sponge and paper towels, sew himself back up. At the end of it all, he’d been beyond pain.

He deserved it, though. He deserved to be in pain, to pay for his sins in self-torture and blood.

When did he become the monster?

It started with a snow-bound accident.

His loss.

His hatred for what happened.

His hunger.

It’d been cold and lonely, stuck in a car with his dead wife and son. After a few days, he gradually became so, so hungry. He resisted. He cried for help. He attempted for the hundredth time to get himself out of the metal mesh of the car, but couldn’t. He wasn’t strong enough. He resisted. He gnawed on the leather and canvas of his jacket. He tore strips of fabric from their clothes and bundled them under his own. He resisted.

After a week and a day, he was beyond dehydrated, and was unable to stop shivering and pissing. The car stank of old meat and urine. His skin felt dry as bone and just as elastic. He was cold.

He couldn’t feel his hands. He couldn’t feel his feet. The makeshift insulation he’d hoarded wasn’t keeping in enough heat anymore. He was so hungry, and so thirsty.

Wasn’t blood a liquid?

…could he drink it?

Maybe it would ease his thirst?

He'd cut open a shallow wound on the body of his wife with a piece of glass from the partially broken windshield.

There was no blood, but he could see a few drops beading up. He turned her over to where the blood had pooled, and cut deeper.

Thick, black blood surged out; it smelled and looked horrific, but he'd been beyond caring at that point; his thirst lead him to cover the cut with his mouth and suck as much blood out as he could.

It was just as disgusting as it appeared, and he'd gagged and spat it out. He'd turned the body upside down to keep the blood inside, if he'd want to try again later.

It was another day and a half before he gave in.

By now the blood was even thicker when he mutilated his wife, congealed and sluggishly oozing out of the slash in her upper arm. It tasted foul beyond imagine.

He'd drank his fill.

He prayed for his sanity, and for the forgiveness of his wife. The guilt was eating at him; he'd felt it in his gut, churning and spitting acid, burning his stomach.

___

After two more weeks, he could no longer move his legs, and his body felt swollen and tight, even though when he felt under his shirt, he could count his ribs, feel his hips jutting out. He'd been consuming his wife's blood occasionally since that first time, despite how fouler and fouler it became. He’d been too thirsty to care, and he couldn't reach the snow outside to melt and drink it. There was really no other choice.

It was then that he cut off a bit of her shoulder and chewed it.

The body was near frozen - it didn't smell terrible yet, just of cold blood and stagnant flesh. The actual act of eating her flesh, though, ate at his soul, carved out bits of his mind. He still felt where those hollow, festering parts were, deep inside him.

It was then that he felt something stir, something dark, something that lurked in the abyss of his psych.

It gave shrill screams to

eat

more

…and when he finally got to his breaking point, that true spot where a human being loses all sense of emotional reason, all inhibitions, all resistance to the urges of a beast…

He’d carved more and more meat off of her.

He’d eaten it.

He’d

enjoyed

it.

 


End file.
